Artists can be a nasty lot, especially when big money prizes are at stake. Mostly though, they draw the line at murder. But not John Russell. Last night the painter pulled a revolver on his partner, Fabienne Audeoud, and shot her - what he wanted, it turned out, was the £65,000 Becks Futures prize.

The "murder" committed in front of the glitterati at the ICA in London was performance art. It was in homage to the late William Burroughs, author of the drug-inspired Naked Lunch, who shot his wife just for the hell of it.

Russell and Audeoud, who paint large canvasses inspired by Grünewald, but with lots more gaping orifices, are one of the early favourites for the prize, the richer little sister of the Turner Prize.

This year, with six of the 10 young artists shortlisted calling themselves painters, and three others photographers, the Becks candidates seem a little on the tame side. The ICA said it saw this as a sign they belonged to a "sincere and unsensationalist" generation of artists, after the headline-grabbing iconoclasm of Brit Art and its hell-raising stars, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

The exhibition is dominated by a huge horse and rider made out of recycled rubbish, a vast, spookier version by the sculptor Brian Griffith of the headless horseman in Tim Burton's film, Sleepy Hollow.

Inevitably, most of the artists, including the youngest, Gemma Iles, a 24-year-old photographer still at art school, have already had their work bought by Charles Saatchi, the advertising guru who dominates the British art scene. The other shortlisted artists are Clare Woods, Dan Holdsworth, Tim Stoner, Simon Bill, Shahin Afrassiabi and DJ Simpson.

The show runs until May at the ICA in central London and then tours galleries in Edinburgh, Liverpool, Newcastle and New York. The winners will be announced on April 10.